Is pgf-umlsd incompatible with pgfplots?

Question

The following document renders a nice sequence diagram for me:

\documentclass[12pt,english]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{babel}
%\usepackage{pgfplots}
% Sequence diagrams:
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,shadows} % for pgf-umlsd
\usepackage[underline=true,rounded corners=false]{pgf-umlsd}
\begin{document}
\begin{sequencediagram}
\newthread{a}{Client}
\newthread{b}{Server}
\mess{a}{X}{b}
\mess{a}{Y}{b}
\begin{call}{a}{$Z_a$}{b}{$Z_b$}\end{call}
\end{sequencediagram}
\end{document}

Good sequence diagram

But when I uncomment the line \usepackage{pgfplots}, the vertical lines and bars vanish:

Bad sequence diagram

In my real document I need the pgfplots package. So how can I make the two compatible?

^{I'm using MiKTeX 2.9 and TeXworks 0.4.4 r1003 on Windows XP SP2; pgf-umlsd 0.5 and pgfplots 1.6.1. I will also need it to work on an FC11 Linux system that's stuck at TeXLive 2007.}

Update

Although I can't find an exact match in the pgf-umlsd issues list, issue 15 seems to describe the same conflict between pgf-umlsd and pgf-umlcd, and this was fixed in pgf-umlsd 0.7.

I locally updated the package to 0.7 in my Windows environment, but the problem persisted.

Both (with or without pgflots) yield identical results for me using TeXLive 2012. So, most likely you are using older packages. — Peter Grill, Oct 29 '12 at 20:01
@PeterGrill: I managed to find some version numbers and edited them into the question. If versioning is an issue then that's a concern, as I'll also need this to work on an FC11 Linux system that's stuck at TeXLive 2007. — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 20:04
Why not install TeXLive 2012 on the linux system? If you don't have root access, you can install it somewhere in your home directory. — Ian Thompson, Oct 29 '12 at 20:16
@PeterGrill: I've updated pgf-umlsd to 0.7 but it has had no effect. I verified with \listfiles that the update took. — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 20:16
@IanThompson: I have root access, but FC11 has no TeXLive package > 2007 and I don't want to go down the potential dependency hell of a manual install at this stage. Plus this still has to work on Windows too. — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 20:17
You don't need to install via a package manager. Just use this. It is very easy. — Ian Thompson, Oct 29 '12 at 20:18
@IanThompson: I know I don't need to, but it's a shared company server and I don't want to go down the manual install route. There must be a way to fix this with the versions I'm on, especially now that I have updated pgf-umlsd to the latest, and since pgfplots 1.6.1 was only released this past August. I'll try a manual update to pgfplots 1.7, though. — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 20:21
@PeterGrill: Could you possibly tell me what the package versions are for you? — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 20:22
@Qrrbrbirlbel: Yep I don't mind updating the packages manually. It's the surrounding TeX environment that I'm not going to touch for this one feature. — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 20:26
My package versions are pgf-umlsd.sty 2009/09/30 v0.5, and pgfplots.sty 2012/10/26 v1.7. — Peter Grill, Oct 29 '12 at 21:28
@PeterGrill: Thanks. Turns out v1.7 of pgfplots makes all the difference. Clearly you have a disciplined upgrade routine! — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 29 '12 at 21:37
Hmmm... I wish. More like I am waiting for an updated version of a package to show up: Incompatibility between currfile and enumitem?. — Peter Grill, Oct 29 '12 at 21:41

Lightness Races in Orbit · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-29T20:56:38.287

5

Although I can't find an exact match in the pgf-umlsd issues list, issue 15 seems to describe the same conflict between pgf-umlsd and pgf-umlcd, and this was fixed in pgf-umlsd 0.7. However, updating pgf-umlsd to 0.7 did not solve the problem. I reverted it back to 0.5.

Updating pgfplots to 1.7 did solve the problem (due to a bug in 1.6.1 that the package author points out in the comments below).

Having done this, a cursory check shows that my usage of pgfplots doesn't appear to be broken anywhere in my real .tex files.

I had to perform this package update manually, but it works in both the Windows and FC11 Linux environments.

edited Oct 29 '12 at 20:56

answered Oct 29 '12 at 20:32

Lightness Races in Orbit

651

The reason is: pgfplots 1.6.1 introduced a bug which lead to broken layers (i.e. your question is a duplicate of http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/77594/why-does-pgfplots-package-cause-tikz-layer-to-disappear ). pgfplots 1.7 repairs this. Sorry. – Christian Feuersänger Oct 29 '12 at 20:50
@ChristianFeuersänger: Aha! Then, thanks not only for fixing it but also for allowing me to stop researching the reason this failed. :) – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 29 '12 at 20:52

Is pgf-umlsd incompatible with pgfplots?

Update

1 Answers1